The Virgin Suicide
by K.Henderson
Summary: Bella is a normal girl capable of jealousy and seeing the world in a "Me Me Me" motif just like any other teenager. Therese if a friend of Edward's and it is because of Therese that Bella begins the see past herself as an adult through personal tragedy.


**_The Virgin Suicide_**

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It bothered me that another person was close to my boyfriend and furthering this annoyance was that this girl had known him before I had, had been his confidant and friend before I came around and had given him to me with a stupid smile on her beautiful face because she had never truly realized what he thought of her, what she could have had or that he had loved her first, always and maybe more then he would love me, albeit, in a _different_ way.

I could not blame her for it she had become his friend latched onto his kindness because of the mismatched sequences of her life that left her utterly alone. Therese Carter, neither white nor black but stuck somewhere in the middle because she was a child made by unfair circumstances, had been thrust into a world that had still not accepted this type diversity, this type of circumstance. There hadn't been cruelty from those around her just, pity.

Eerily this girl had kept close to his side. Brown soft hair falling in a choppy mess from her mothers' aggravated abuse with scissors before she had shouted "that white mans hair that goddamn rapist" and her green eyes were bruised underneath because she didn't sleep well did she eat enough to look healthy. It came to my attention that the reasons for Edward's compliance of Therese, of course this being my own and very secret, was the simple fact that he felt sorry for her situation and that of course, she would never _ever_ tell.

Sometimes he would visit her at night; times when he was sure I would sleep throughout the night. He would return just before morning always with this forlorn look on his face, his eyes sad. It was during times like this that he liked to stay quiet. I could almost read the questions in his mind; how can people be so horrible to their own children?

I couldn't answer the question for him; I couldn't tell him anything that would make him feel better about it. There was nothing that I could say.

It was at three in the morning in March when he got the call, when our lives changed forever as I should say because it was not just his life but ours. I insisted on going with him, piling up in my old truck, the night air was cool the stars were coming out bright through the thick blue clouds as we passed the houses in their dull perfection and almost like a cliché made for TV bad movie, we passed over the train tracks to the bad side of town.

The smell of smoke and wet grass filled the air around us and the cold was almost too much for me but we continued on with the windows rolled down passing the older houses, beautiful and almost stuck into a time that had seen better days. Wisps of hair came undone from the bun on the crown of my head and I released it without looking away from the window where my eyes were caught, staring at the shadows that played on the houses and concrete.

Therese's house was the smallest, the loneliest. I realized that in a moment we would be coming to a halt in the shoddy driveway and Therese would be outside she would almost fly into Edward's arms and then she would leave with us and the jealousy of their friendship would begin to fester like it always did.

I thought back to the first day she and I had met in the cold almost sterile white of the girl's bathroom. She was sitting on the sink, her dirty blue jeans hugging her legs too tightly, her converse sneakers looked like the rubber soles would fall and her sweater was a faded red almost turned pink. But she was pretty, the curtain of chocolate brown hair almost covered her heart shaped tanned face and her downcast green eyes were the color of moss. Her long fingers grasped at the white metal handle switching the faucet on and off every few seconds.

'Wha'cha looking at, girlie?' She asked with a smile. Glossy pink lips parting in a large grin, striking attractive and so extraordinarily miserable.

And I remember thinking she was Latino and not the beautifully exotic Molato child she actually was and then I thought oddly of her because of the book. In her lap sat a copy of _Pride and Prejudice_. It had been decorated with stickers of glittered hearts and Jell pen writing spelling out her name in bubble letters. The copy looked well worn.

'You never saw anybody read a book like this or something? It's my favorite.'

I walked right out of that bathroom away from the strange sad girl with orange fingernails and mossy green eyes and a penchant it seemed, for liking the books I liked. The strange girl was quickly erased as lunch time rolled around and I saw him for the fist time. The weird beauty of the bathroom hadn't been seen in a week after that, she had not been mentioned or heard of, like I had imagined her existence. But then there was a school trip, one that I cant really remember as I had only see the students boarding the buss because I wasn't in that class. There she was, walking with him talking to him and his sister like she belonged. The daffodil sticking out from a bouquet of roses, she was in a place she didn't belong.

Eventually as he and I became a couple she also became a constant in my life. Sometimes I would go to his house to find her in his room wearing a pair of boxers that belonged to him and a jersey that was most likely not hers and the jealousy would bloom. Every time I would feel this jealousy and the urge to become angry she would smile at me like that first day and my words would die in my throat.

"Ah Bell, don't look like that. I didn't have anything clean to wear his mama's doing my laundry!"

That was always the kind of explanation I got, or that there wasn't food in her house and that was why she was eating at his place and of course, her mother hadn't paid the electric and that there was no light in the house.

Sometimes her mother wouldn't come home at all and she would stay at her boyfriends place and tell Therese to fend for herself.

'Now you be nice to that girl,' Charlie said one morning Therese asleep up in my room after a long night of studying and talking about Edward. 'I see that way you get with Edward because of her.' And then he had explained it, Therese and her painful beginnings. Therese's mother, bright future, scholarship on her way out of this small town with high hopes: raped, pregnant, a catholic mother and father that did not believe in abortion.

Therese had lived with her grandparents until a year and a half ago, until they had both died. She hadn't a choice but to go back to her mother who by this time had just gotten divorced and had moved into a house on the bad side of town.

Understandably, Therese's mother had never been the same again.

We pull into the driveway, the truck is parked but the engine is not shut off. The blue sky is bright tonight, the stars are pretty above this little little brick house. There's a light on at the front window, the red curtains give off a faint golden glow but there is an odd shadow in front of them.

"Bella, stay here. I'll be right back." Edward says golden eyes troubled? He pauses for only a moment, trying to pick out her minds voice, her thoughts. He runs a nervous hand through his hair, completely human. "I can't-but she's home I can smell her-unless?" His eyes widen, he kisses my cheek and runs into the house at such a speed I hadn't noticed.

The door hangs off its hinges, wind blows inside the house from the front door, the red curtains move and I see it, swinging.

"Therese!"

I'm climbing out of the truck, my legs feel heavy, I can't breathe. I run up to the broken red door and come straight into the living room, my running feet making no noise of the brown carpet. There is a red couch there, an old worn coffee table; one of those tall lamps that hang at awkward angles that in the 90's seemed mod is lit in the corner. The TV has rabbit ears; the VCR had a tiny little green light an arrow pointing to the left a tape is rewinding. I can hear it.

Edward is standing in front of the TV staring at the middle of the room that smells like mold from the flower vases one on the coffee table and one onto of the TV. The water in both vases is black and green, the petals all fallen off and brown.

And in the middle of that room Therese's body is swaying, tied off from the ceiling fan, hanging.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Edward is just staring at her body like he doesn't know what to do the lamp light makes his pale skin almost shimmer like he's sweating. And all I can do is see her smiling face on that first day, the image of her laughing with Alice clear in my mind, seeing her in Emmett's jersey and Edward's boxer shorts walking back and forth examining all of his music.

'Hey Bella, we're friends right?'

'Yeah, sure.'

'No I mean, we're friends. Not just because of Edward either. On that first day I knew that you would be my friend.'

Her body swings, a sound a shriek is coming from somewhere loudly. Edward is holding me trying to block my view of the corpse. I'm screaming, I'm crying and shouting. I hear Therese's voice, childish and husky, young and old, happy and so incredibly sad.

'We're friends always. Even after you turn into a pretty vampire and when I start to get old, we'll be friends.'

And I realized that I didn't want to die, ever. I wanted to live, always maybe for her, maybe not, I don't know. This story doesn't have a conclusion because the girl is dead. I can tell you about the police, the coroner the funeral and her mother. I can tell you about the months that followed. I can tell you about the year that passed after that, I can explain in all the words I know how Edward never really smiled from his heart and how many times I found him parked in front of that old now abandoned brick house or sitting on Therese's tombstone listening to music sad because he was barred away from death a place he could never go but now where she existed.

Can you handle me continuing on, about how sick of it all I was how the day after my 18th birthday Edward and his family left and how devastated I was, that I was imagining the stupidest things because I would hear his voice and in my nightmares I would see the scene before, Therese's suicide?

What about how Edward never came back, that now I'm 22 years old, just graduating college and dating?

No, I won't continue, the rest of this story ended the day Therese died, the day that Edward stopped believing in human contact and left me at the first opportunity, the day that I realized that the sun did not rise and fall because of me, when I grew up.

A happy ending for this story is really up to your imagination, isn't it?

For me, Isabella Swan however, this is _The End_.

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**Disclaimer: I don't own the TWI characters. Therese is all that is mine.**

**Bella's character developed as the story progressed, you notice that? She became much more understanding a mature and LIKEABLE.**

**Like Bella said the ending of the story is up to YOU. Tell me how the story ends readers, tell me how you want it to end, how it's continued and finished for you? Please?**

**Don't Flame.**


End file.
